Closely Read Brackets, Week Two

Several of my colleagues and I heedlessly posted our N.C.A.A. brackets over at the Sporting Scene blog last week, before the tournament began. So how do they look now? Pretty, if you like red crossings-out; otherwise, it’s sort of disheartening. I didn’t pick Kansas, but that’s about all I can say for myself. Jon Michaud has a wrap-up of how the rest of The New Yorker’s office pool is doing. He wrote it before Syracuse’s loss—another blow.

What in sports is more depressing and enraging than brackets? How about the Ben Roethlisberger story? That is quite grave, DNA or no DNA, and one hopes that the Steelers—and the Georgia police—are taking the allegations against him as seriously as they should.

Amy Davidson Sorkin, a New Yorker staff writer, is a regular contributor to Comment for the magazine and writes a Web column, in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between.

The ace pilot leading Virgin Galactic’s billion-dollar quest to make commercial space travel a reality.

Asian-Americans, a largely made-up group united by historical marginalization, are desperate for a movie like this one to be perfect, because the opportunity to make another might not arrive for another quarter century.